The Pakiki classroom has been very busy over the last few weeks of Term 3 and this will definitely continue into Term 4! We have a number of visits and visitors planned, plus preparation for our sharing evening in Week 6. Over all the Term is going to be varied and challenging.
Week 3. 27th, 28th & 29th October: We are very pleased to be welcoming Paul Campbell from Makerspace into the classroom for a full day workshop on using Arduinos. Arduinos are small computer chips that can be connected to other hardware and then programmed to perform tasks. I really recommend searching YouTube and having a look at some of the amazing things people are able to achieve with this relatively simple device. The children will learn how to connect hardware to the device and to write code to programme it. Each student will be given an Arduino kit that comes complete with the hardware they need to programme some simple circuits. After which they will be able to take them home to keep for free! We a very thankful to Paul for this opportunity. We welcome keen parents and teachers to join us during these sessions to get their own taste of how Arduinos work.
Week 4: 3rd, 4th & 5th November: As a part of our Concept Curriculum topic on Biomimicry, Pakiki will be taking a trip to the Architecture van Brandenburg headquarters in Princes St. AvB are a group of architects that use nature to inspire the designs of their buildings. They are most notably famous for their Marisfrolg Headquarters in Shenzhen, China. Nina Daniels will give us a guided tour of how they work and give us some good insight into how Biomimicry is used to solve real problems and give inspiration.
Week 7&8, 24th, 25th & 26th November and 1st, 2nd & 3rd December: Anna Murphy STEM programme. For these two weeks we are very excited to invite Anna Murphy to Pakiki to run a series of STEM sessions - Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths - where the children will have the opportunity to design, create and test their own two-stage rocket. Anna’s programme has a strong emphasis on problem solving through hands-on trial and error - isolating key variables to test and change.
As for our curriculum areas, Pakiki this term has the following focus: In Personal Development we’ll be looking at comparing a ‘Growth’ mindset versus a ‘Fixed’ mindset - identifying how our attitude towards learning can affect our motivation and growth. Understanding that if we don’t understand something, we don’t understand it ‘yet’ - but this can change!
Concept Curriculum has a continuation of our Biomimicry topic and we will starting our sharing day projects in small groups. Here, students have to agree upon an approach to design something using nature as inspiration. They can either start with an interesting natural organism and identify challenges that can be solved from its traits, or begin with a challenge and find examples of solutions in nature. There is also a strong focus on communication, delegation and organisation with their work - applying their particular skills to suit the group as a whole.
In Talent Development we are focusing on setting ourselves achievable goals in their chosen area each week, and being able to communicate this appropriately. This also includes strategies to find solutions to problems as well as inspiration and motivation. The kids need to set themselves regular deadlines and book in sharing sessions and work on feedback they receive from their peers.
Here’s to a busy term! Na, Brendan
Thursday 17 September 2015
The term is almost at an end, and we're starting to have some great weather which I think is putting a smile on all of our faces! We have had a very busy last couple of weeks, and have been working hard on our Talent goal setting and planning. The kids have been getting into the habit of regularly setting themselves targets to achieve and then reviewing how they went each week.
We have also had a couple of visitors join us in the Pakiki classroom:
The exceptionally talented Scout Liu joined us to show us some of her anime artwork, and how she uses photoshop to draw, edit and process amazing pieces of artwork. Scout is also in the final stages of her studies in micro-biotechnology, and it was very interesting hearing her thoughts on switching from her 'science brain' to her 'creative brain' between her studies and her art work.
We also had Tosh Ringland-Stewart, Doctor of Philosophy (currently based in Suva in Fiji) come in to speak with our Thursday class on what it means to be someone who works in Philosophy - a question that raised more questions than it did answers!
Most recently, we have had Louise Wallace - editor of Starling Magazine - come in on Wednesday to discuss with the kids about what it means to be a career writer - most notably how submissions of work take time to be accepted. Several of our writers are hoping to be able to submit some writing to Starling in the future, in the hope they might get published. Skype interviews are set for next week on Tuesday and Thursday.
Our topic of Biomimicry is well underway, and we have been looking carefully at different 'weird' animals in nature and how they have adapted to their environment. We have also been looking at different inventions which have used nature as a heavy influence to their creation.
Finally, we have taken the opportunity at the end of the term as 'John Appreciation Week'. John Calder has been diligently coming in to coach the kids in chess for a long time now. His passion for the game certainly encourages the kids to work on their strategy and game sense skills, and I have found myself being beaten by the kids on several occasions. We celebrated with a 'High Tea' party, where we drank hot chocolate, and ate some snacks and talked in posh accents with our backs straight, elbows off the table and pinkies not touching the cups. Fun times!
Thanks to all! Brendan/Mr C.
Monday 3 August 2015
Term 3 Greetings to all! Brendan Christie here, stepping in for Scott as the new lead teacher for Pakiki. Hopefully by now you will have received a copy of this term's newsletter... In it you will find my notes on the directions of our learning for Term 3 plus a short introduction about myself. I would like to thank Susan and Tor, and John as NEVN school principal as well as Scott for the great support and guidance I have received transitioning into the Pakiki classroom. Last week we had Max Major, a nueroscientist from Otago University come in and run some experiments with the kids on how the brain perceives ownership of the body. Some of the kids went through an experiment to fool their brain into thinking their arm was actually a fake one - attached are photos and some videos of their thoughts afterwards.
This week we have Scout Liu coming in to work with the art enthusiasts during our talent time - she is a talented sketch artist who specialises in anime drawings, but is very diverse with her artistic styles. Scout will help develop what the students already know about vanishing points and perspective and together they will work on a collaborative project that experiments with using different mediums such as paint, charcoal and a variety of pencil types.
More to come later, thanks to all the parents who have come in and said hi before or after school. It is really a pleasure to be greeted with such enthusiasm.
Kind regards, Brendan
Buddy Day 2015
Kia ora all,
Another year, another buddy day, giving the students an opportunity to share some of the kinds of things that happen at Pakiki with a friend from their home-school. This aims to create more of a connection between Pakiki and school and make it less of a mystery for all. The students are typically very keen to share their Pakiki place with their buddies and today was no exception. I have added a set of photos showing some of the kids in action as we created and researched catapults, critically analysed famous cases of musical plagiarism and made our own judgment on on the songs' similarities and invested the afternoon engaging in creative activities. A lot of fun for all, I hope. I would also like to take this opportunity to say farewell and thanks to all those who have supported me and who I have worked with at Pakiki over 2 and half years of Wednesdays. I have had a lot of fun, learnt much and most of all meet some amazing students. All the best for your new learning kids
April 29
This morning started with our second installment of Dabrowski. Today we looked at his theory of positive self-disintegration. This is basically a way of thinking about self-reflection and our habits. We unpacked and paraphrased a juicy Dabrowski quote then we set about positively disintegrating our own individual learning habits. The students were mixed in their ability to unpack their own habits, I scaffolded some of these difficulties but I also want to record their current understanding so we compare their understanding later in the year. At this point some of the students - Cora and Billie e.g. - took it upon themselves to plan out their day. I had deliberately not instructed this today for a variety of reasons, mostly because I want them to reflect on their Dabrowski revelations next week, on the other hand I didn't stop those who just went ahead and did it. After our Dabrowski we swapped to talent - Martin has returned from his worldly travels (which he described to us and showed the blog he created after lunch) so we did some quick diagnostics to see how much of the algebra we had done in his absence he could do. He quickly moved along to solving for x with fraction answers. Cora had good success simplifying equations and solving for x. Hamish made good progress on his writing which I was pleased about! Solomon spent a lot of time thinking about food during this section of his writing. Vinnie readjusted the audience for his scratch programme - he is now adapting his work into an educational reading game for young children. I think this is a great idea, which we can test with Ms. Leia's class of youngsters. Nico had a great session first with people testing and making suggesting for his game, and then incorporating some of the suggestions - it is a great wee game and still improving - well done Nico! The art students, John, Emma and Ayla, had a visit today to the animal attic where they were lucky enough to work with an artist and continue their animal drawing theme. The results will be on the wall next week - but it seems they had a lot of fun and have created some cool artwork using different materials to what we have been using at Pakiki.
Today's chess lesson was on forks and pins - a valuable lesson for me as I was able to attack Liam's queen with a fork and force a resignation - thanks John :) In the afternoon we heard from Martin who we welcomed back from several weeks away on holiday in Europe. Martin had a kept a thorough blog while he was away so we invested some time looking at Gaudi architecture from Barcelona, some famous Italian structures and hearing about his favourite visit - Stonehenge at Salisbury. Following Martin's recap we turned to our music unit. We did some shared google searching on the tv/internet and the students helped me search for information about my question on cultural differences and instruments. Then they were off on their own research paths. Vinnie, Cora and Prastutee all searched for interesting instrument origins (a 60000 year old bone flute seems to be the oldest known instrument). John and Michael teamed up to work on songs written during and around war and uncovered an ANZAC marching song written in 1916. Nico and Martin uncovered a lot about ancient music making from Egypt, Byzantine empires and Emma and Zara found some information out about a bagpipe from Ancient Egypt. The focus on old instruments from various cultures that so many took had me wondering about the downside of providing a modelling lesson at the start of the session. There were many options to choose to research - the kids had brainstormed all the connections between music and change they could think of the week earlier - but the vast majority followed my lead in the modelled lesson. Never mind, I am sure they will splinter in to different discoveries and interests the further their research goes.
See you next week!
Scott.
April 1.
Kia ora all
A busy day finishing off term projects, assessing ourselves, working on talent projects and for some who got everything sorted (Cora) having a go at using "fun theory" to solve some problems. Cora worked on an interactive maths game for students to play when they are getting tired in the afternoon. Everybody had to do some mild reflecting and set some goals for the rest of the year. These will be attached to a document I will send out early next week that include a comment from me and leave a comment space for whanau to contribute. I am from poems were finsihed up and self-assessed (except Vinnie's self-assessment, which has mysteriously disappeared....hmmm?). Students set about working on their amygdala projects and their brain collages. The latter are mostly done now and looking great. I will post them on the wall over the holiday break (which starts to suggest how much of a holiday this is). In the morning I spent the whole morning centred around the writing talent group. Others came and went with problems they thought they needed me to solve and questions they were pondering but for the most part I worked with Michael, Megan and Prastutee to help them spark their work into life (Solomon and Hamish, who are also writers had plenty of me last week and prior so they were already flying - well done today -especially Hamish who showed a continued improvement in self-managing for success - well done). My attention worked (hurray - I am useful!). Prastutee went on a creative wave pounding us with with ideas as we developed the plot graph. Michael was joining in and when he realised their was some important foreshadowing his previous writing would benefit from he rushed off to an area to write it in while the idea was hot. Great thinking and learning choice Michael. The two of them have a wonderful plan for a very good story that continues to develop their idea of parallel universes. Excellent creative thinking you two!
In the middle session Emma's dad, Michel, came and helped the maths group with algebra. This was great and freed me up to be working with Ayla and others who were struggling with a few things (mostly technological) in order to finish their brain collages. This meant that by the time we had chess, two of the four talent groups had some serious individual attention. This continued after lunch when Liam revealed the web server he had developed for the scratch group to share their work within the class. This is a useful tool so that the students can share their coding and give each other ideas and hints from computer to computer - thanks Liam! Only the artists didn't get individual attention today though Emma still managed to draw some stunning tigers! Guess whose first with me on day one next term!
We ended the day with the term shop - I had some goodies I had been gathering up and some went on display for purchase via the Pakiki money that the students had earned helping with general class (non-learning) tasks like cleaning up etc. I have often done blind auctions at this time and was intending to do so again but had a last minute brain wave to do a shop. This provided some opportunities to talk about loans, hire purchases, interest, "interest free" and service fees. These came about because students were looking for loans. We also talked about the need for capital or underwriters (financial backing we called it) before business could operate with loan structures. Of course the Pakiki shop, being a newly fledged business, had no such connections was not able to offer loans. This lead the students to naturally consider saving their money (as did m deliberately pricing the very best goods beyond anyones means). It was interesting to watch the financial decisions the students made. Learning with some fun thrown in for good measure. I will open the shop periodically next term - maybe a couple of times - to keep the conversation going.
Cheers all and have a great break, Scott.
March 11
Hi all, today started with us drifting into talent as we arrived at various times. This works well as everyone can settle into their learning easily and I can call tutorial groups to me once the full team is here. This morning I worked with the mathematicians on a problem solving mission which they dedicated much time to but have not yet solved (though almost - they are fully on track). We will retackle it next week but only briefly. There is a fine line between persistence and being bogged down. They then worked on some more algebra, using their skills to solve equations and crack codes. I think Liam got onto the balancing equations section but will confirm when I mark their work later. The writers made some good progress. I was especially impressed with Hamish and Solomon. The 3 of us helped Solomon brainstorm just what the setting of a turn of the 20th century English fishing village might contain and we talked about the importance of research when writing a historical novel. We then turned to Hamish who had a cursory plot forming out of some brainstorming and planning he had been doing earlier. Within 5 minutes he had a great idea formed and had a very good starting scene planned that would set the rest of the plot up nicely. He was well into writing out this scene by the time we had to stop. What he has so far is perfect in terms of what he was planning. Well done Hamish. The other writers had a team meeting exploring the way they were going to co-construct their novel which is being written from 3 different character's perspectives. Each student began writing their section today and while I got back enough to see they had made some progress I will be reading through this tonight. The artists began by focussing on various animal eyes based around an art tutorial online. They then created a close-up of animals heads as a way of integrating their previously worked on skill. We then analysed some of the results and thought about the way sometimes we struggle making the leap from knowing something to doing something. John noted there was a tendency to normalise our pictures (his words) and in doing so lose some of the new skills we were attaining. This will be an ongoing challenge for us across the year. The scratch team were working on integrating sprites. Some of them could already do this successfully - Nicholas notably and Vinnie to an extent. These two were still having some hiccups with points and time variables so we analysed some code on my octopus game and they attempted to "unglitch" their coding. Nico made progress getting his dog to move up and down as well as left and right and started to incorporate another sprite that would move randomly. Zara's code also got her sprite to move successfully in all directions and she is working on the interacting challenge.
In the next section we started with an ongoing class debate regarding brain - breaks, financial rewards, and tolerance around differentiated learning styles. It is not that this class has a problem with these, more that they seem to be a spirited area for discussion. These meetings are doing a wonderful job of allowing the students to explore debating a point of view in a way that shows respectful disagreement or support, and where reasons are paramount. In the end I had a secret vote taken for the various issues just so I could see where the class was positioning itself - it was pretty much split 50/50. As such I have decided to have the casting vote to resolve the deadlock and to incorporate some kind of compromise amongst the positions. Here it is: on the subject of brain breaks - brain break cards can be played for 5 minute breaks (once a day except for in extraneous circumstances, as determined by Mr K); Brian-breaks do not include computer games; brain-breaks do not mean you can distract others but pairs can take them together; there is no reward for not using a brain-break; brain breaks cannot be used during clean up time. The auction shall be 'blind', however, the prizes will be sorted into categories (3 or so) each with a different starting reserve. There will be a bogus prize in each auction. You can choose not to spend your money and save it for a future auction. REMEMBER, the prizes will be small - Mr. K purchases these out of his own pocket and there are 48 kids at Pakiki. You do the maths (prize donations are welcome :) The auction is more about having a laugh to celebrate the end of term, more than anything else.
After our meeting we moved onto our poetry. The students are almost all finished now or very close to it. If you get the chance come and read your child's poem :) When all the classes are done I will post the poems on the wall, with the permission of the authors, of course. Well done Cora, Emma, Liam, Nico, Ayla and the others who are all done. It is valuable learning for the students to focus on the drafting, editing and reworking process that is important to successful writing.
After lunch we looked at the amygdala, our fear response and how we might control it when we are experiencing amygdala hi-jacking. The students took notes from our shared research and then we brainstormed various ways they could share their findings. We have t.v. interviews with 'experts', newspaper articles, scratch animations, information posters, and animated dramas. Well done Vinnie, Liam, Emma, Martin, Nico and Michael for making such good progress. I look forward to seeing the rest completed next week.
Cheers all, see you next week,
Scott.
Feb 25 Hi all, this morning started with a look at the class meeting book where there were two entries. The first was the statement "I hungry". This lead to a discussion around the verb "to be" (which was obviously missing and the source of much amusement to the class). In an earlier life I had studied te reo Maori at university and became quite interested in verb differences between Maori and English - especially the verb "to be" and the verb "to have", both of which do not exist in te reo. What interested me was the way the language reflected cultural understandings about the relationship between the individual and the community and about possessions. Maori were traditionally communal and both private property and the individual were not given the significance that they have in traditional Western conceptions. I was curious if the students would see the social implications of these verbs not existing in a language. They were quick to note the lack of private ownership ( I think it was John who picked this up) but didn't notice the differences in understanding the subject ( there is some background knowledge needed here). I can't quite remember the segue but something in the discussion about possessions lead Nico to raise the issue of NZ troops being deployed in the middle east. Nico wasn't the only student interested in this current event and an interesting discussion emerged which I based on the idea of multiple perspectives (which the students understand as a 'thinking tool' in the classroom). I wouldn't say that everyone was into it but it was welcoming to see a number of students interested in the political and social debate, including notably today Solomon, Nico, Hamish, Michael and Liam.
After this sidetrack we got to what I had actually planned, which began with a quick warm up using random connections ( a game to encourage generalisations). We then did another mini research project on Habits of Mind. Today was looking at "taking responsible risks". The students had 10 minutes to research, gather and paraphrase their information. We then had several share their findings. The point of these mini-tasks is to introduce or entrench research skills and to introduce and reinforce important habits of mind to students who may not have met them. We finished the first session by returning to our I am from poetry. I had a checklist of poetic techniques ready for the students and we used this to analyse a poem together. Then we took to writing our own, checklists at the ready. Liam completed his very quickly and was more than willing to elaborate and refine his poetic language. Well done. Virtually all the students wrote with good focus during this session and it was encouraging to see some students acting metacognitively and deliberately choosing spaces which they found helped them write more efficiently (well done Billie and Michael). I look forward to marking the drafts over the next few days.
After morning tea I had planned to watch the next session in our neuroscience unit and make direct links to some change generalisations. However, Hamish and Solomon asked if we could address the other entry in the meeting book which was about student attention and choices. They were concerned that some students were "doing their own thing" a little and this was not a luxury afforded to all. A fair enough inquiry. So, instead of neuroscience we had a community of enquiry on the issue. The students were thoughtful and focussed in this discussion and I applaud it as part of our 'own your own learning' theme. Martin set the ball rolling with an argument around equality - defined here as everyone getting the same distribution of rights - basically what was good for one ought to be good for all. The point was raised that if the discussion was not giving instructions perhaps those that were interested could stay and those that were not just head off. Someone else then said that when the heading off included computers this could be distracting to others. A very wise head ( I think Emma or Cora) suggested that Mr. K could talk less and just go straight to clear and concise instructions. Someone else (MIchael?) thought we needed to ask permission if we wanted to leave to another activity. Solomon asked if we could timetable breaks, so that different people could take them at different times. I listened with a lot of interest as the students talked and shaped the kind of classroom they wanted. I added two ideas of my own. The first, which I positioned (or tried to) as just another participant in the discussion, was that when it comes to instructions students (people actually) have very different ways of taking in information and very different needs as to how much information they need to feel comfortable to start. In this instance if someone is ready to go, they ought to go (with a quick indication to me they are ready). I do not see any point in students listening to me when they are ready. When it comes to more general discussions people often have different interests and my typical approach is that if the students are choosing learning or practising activities (reading, drawing, writing being 3 typical ones) I have no problem with it. My judgement is made on the quality of a student's learning progress not their particular learning style. If it is a discussion I feel we all need to be a part of I will of course let that be known and expectations will be adjusted accordingly. In response to Solomon's suggestion we decided to implement a card system. Each student created their own personal card which they could play once a day. It allows them 10 minutes of doing anything reasonable so long as it does not distract others' learning. Needless to say, neuroscience went out the window for the day and the time-out cards were made. Thanks Solomon and Hamish for helping us establish the culture of the class early in the year.
Chess finished the morning session with John teaching back row check mate and the students began a tournament that will run across the term, the intention of which is primarily to encourage students to vary their opponents.
The afternoon was all about talent. The scratch team started with me and focussed on animating using costumes and direction so that they could move their sprite fluently around the screen no matter what direction they were going, in a way that looked like it was actually walking rather than just gliding. Nico was rightly proud of his scratch programming today getting a dog to move about nicely. Zara, who is only on her second day of scratch made very good progress; Vinnie completed some excellent independent problem solving to get his diver to move properly; Hamish got his bat moving well and is only one step from completing this mini-task. This is exciting for the kids because it is an important step in designing games! The maths kids also had success. Martin challenged himself to a very tricky multiplication problem and worked tirelessly at it. He also learnt a more efficient multiplication method for big numbers. Liam got very excited doing algebra and demonstrated excellent success and interest. Cora worked hard at her algebra which she also wanted to challenge herself to do. Her and I watched a Khan academy clip on balancing equations and her success and confidence bloomed from there. The art team worked on leg structures, first watching a youtube clip from a tertiary lecture on mammals legs and then practising drawing them on different mammals of their choosing. John (who actually wants to draw cars I think) drew a wolf and an ostriches legs running; Emma did a great job on a deer and started practising cats (which she has set as her next challenge) and Ayla drew an elephant and sketched the leg structure of a velociraptor. The writers all had individualised tasks set from my marking over the weekend. I will read their work over this weekend and have a small tutorial workshop to start talent next week.
A fun days education for me, I hope you enjoyed the learning too. Looking forward to catching up next week, Scott.
Feb 18
Whew, a very hot day 2 for Wednesday! The students did a fine job of maintaining focus in our little glass-house. We started with a creative “what if” question (what if the earth had no moon?). The idea of this kind of task is to encourage fluent thinking about consequences and effects. The students for the most part showed good fluency in their responses. The trick is to encourage them to think fluently and withhold judgement or critique until the end. We followed this with a mini-research project on Habits of Mind. The students chose a Habit they wanted to explore further, to practice questioning skills by asking a secondary question (beyond what does this mean), to search and gather information and finally to paraphrase their findings in a very brief presentation to the class. There were a lot of skills involved in this task and it gave me a look to see the different research experience different students had, as well as to enhance our understanding of the Habits of Mind. The persistence was impressive and everyone was able to present some findings. We talked as a class about the skills they had used and discussed ways to improve their use of Google. We collated our research skills ideas and will continue to build this over the term.
After morning tea we resumed our neuroscience investigation. We watched the next part of our phantom limb/blind sight documentary. Today’s episodes were discussing ‘neglect’ where a patient cannot construct consciousness of one side of their world. This lead to a range of wonderful questions from the students with notable thinking verbalised by Solomon and Vinnie. Many other students had recorded very good questioning in their notes. Note-taking was another key part of this session as part of our research skills focus. The students had some idea about note-taking tricks and there were some very effective methods employed. I particularly liked Nico’s approach which had a grid that included the key language, the corresponding central idea that went with that language and an example of what had happened to the patient. I am aiming to share this with the class next week as a useful and quite unique approach (I haven’t seen it before anyway :). John rounded out the morning with a chess lesson on en passant.
In the afternoon we had our first talent session. The maths kids were doing some pre-testing which will help me tune the rest of the talent programme. They were well focussed completing maths questions from a year 9 text in the hot afternoon with a good degree of success. The art students were looking at proportion when drawing to different scales, as well as focussing on the structure of mammals limbs. WOW! what a talented group of artists. I am really looking forward to providing resources, my limited knowledge and hopefully an expert from the field to support this group. The scratch team almost all had experience with the programme and were encouraged to explore today. Zara was brand new to scratch so I set her small tasks, gave quick tutorials to help her problem solve and bounced back and forth to see how she was getting on. Her problem solving skills were clearly evident as was her persistence - well done! The writers were given some awesome illustrations form Chris van Allsburg as possible writing inspiration. They took a look but most of them went their own way - Billie was interested in poetry so I introduced her to ballad poems (today she read the Rime of the Ancient Mariner) as a way of meshing her preferred genre with the story telling part of the group. Solomon found his way to the maths table and seemed to use this as a creative space writing a significant amount which I will read through in the morning and Prastutee and Megan got together and planned a first person story whose protagonist realises s/he (they want the gender to be undisclosed) is living parallel lives as a different creature in different universes.
Great effort team, I look forward to more next week,
Scott.
Kia ora
Day one for Wednesday Pakiki - firstly, I had a lot of fun with this awesome group of students! We started with some quick getting to know each other activity. This was very quick and more of a chance for me to learn something about the students directly from them than it was for the students to get to know each other (because there are only 3 new students completely new to Pakiki on Wednesday this year - welcome Emma, Prastutee and Zara!). We then went straight into a technology challenge which I find a great way for students to acquaint themselves and get into cooperative learning strategies. This morning's tech challenge was called code-makers and code-breakers. We first took the opportunity for a quick history lesson and did some shared reading on the Navajo code team that the United States used in WW2. Then we set about, in small groups, making codes of our own. The groups then split in 2 and wrote a message I had given them into code. They then swapped coded messages and decoded. This proved their codes work. The harder part of the challenge was to crack a different groups code. Megan, Emma, Pratustee and Zara were the only successful code crackers - well done. Liam used his knowledge of the enigma code to help his team create a difficult code that shifted which letters represented what - well done Liam, Martin, John and Nicholas whose code proved very uncrackable even after I gave opposing teams some hints. We finished the first session by looking over our "Pakiki Way" - a set of learning behaviours that we hope the students will strive to include as they go about their learning this year.
In the middle session we started by looking at the talent choices that we are going to start with. The students were able to look over them and then ranked their preferred choices. Over the week I will collate this data, compare it to school and home talents identified adn sort the students into groups. My preference is, as much as possible, to group the students according to what they want to do unless it really isn't working or we have unmanageable numbers in on group. I am aiming to start talent projects next week. Following this we analysed some poetry that reflects on the self. These "I am from" poems use some interesting language and metaphor to unpack the author's place in the world. We categorised the thinking that was going on in the poems then brainstormed ideas about ourselves using equivalent categories, with the addition of what we saw in ourselves as a learner. The students showed some excellent fluency in recording their ideas and over future sessions we will elaborate these ideas into poetic language. At 12 we engaged in some chess play. It was excellent to see that everyone in the class already knew how to play chess. I had a great game with Martin (and Nico) who played aggressively and very thoughtfully to first take control of the game, then lose control and finally pressure a mistake from me that ended in a victory for him - all done with fun and lots of smiling - a thoroughly enjoyable opportunity to see just how wonderfully capable a chess player Martin is.
In the afternoon we focussed on questioning techniques and how to ask questions that illicit more information. Most of the students had a fairly good grasp of this with Solomon, Michael and Hamish being notable contributors to this thinking. The students were keen on thinking and discussing some of the strange phenomena and the scinece that was being explored to explain it. Hamish even constructed a quick experiment to test some of the claims which had a few of us holding coloured pens out at the edge of our peripheral vision. Once we had unpacked this we took a look at a documentary on neuroscience (about the phenomena of phantom limbs and "blindsight") and wrote questions of our own. We shared some questions and evaluated their depth. Then we created metaphors of our own to think about questions of various depth (we had been using some "teacher" directed ones at the beginning - water and ice imagery). Some of the students had some neat ideas - the earths crust mantle and core (Meagan); a Dutch home with basement, ground floor and attic (Emma). I will look over the rest tonight.
All in all a fun days learning for me - I hope it was the same for you all!
Take care,
Scott.
Kia ora koutou,
The Pakiki classroom has been very busy over the last few weeks of Term 3 and this will definitely continue into Term 4! We have a number of visits and visitors planned, plus preparation for our sharing evening in Week 6. Over all the Term is going to be varied and challenging.
Week 3. 27th, 28th & 29th October: We are very pleased to be welcoming Paul Campbell from Makerspace into the classroom for a full day workshop on using Arduinos. Arduinos are small computer chips that can be connected to other hardware and then programmed to perform tasks. I really recommend searching YouTube and having a look at some of the amazing things people are able to achieve with this relatively simple device. The children will learn how to connect hardware to the device and to write code to programme it. Each student will be given an Arduino kit that comes complete with the hardware they need to programme some simple circuits. After which they will be able to take them home to keep for free!
We a very thankful to Paul for this opportunity. We welcome keen parents and teachers to join us during these sessions to get their own taste of how Arduinos work.
Week 4: 3rd, 4th & 5th November: As a part of our Concept Curriculum topic on Biomimicry, Pakiki will be taking a trip to the Architecture van Brandenburg headquarters in Princes St. AvB are a group of architects that use nature to inspire the designs of their buildings. They are most notably famous for their Marisfrolg
Headquarters in Shenzhen, China. Nina Daniels will give us a guided tour of how they work and give us some good insight into how Biomimicry is used to solve real problems and give inspiration.
Week 7&8, 24th, 25th & 26th November and 1st, 2nd & 3rd December: Anna Murphy STEM programme. For these two weeks we are very excited to invite Anna Murphy to Pakiki to run a series of STEM sessions - Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths - where the children will have the opportunity to design, create and test their own two-stage rocket. Anna’s programme has a strong emphasis on problem solving through hands-on trial and error - isolating key variables to test and change.
As for our curriculum areas, Pakiki this term has the following focus:
In Personal Development we’ll be looking at comparing a ‘Growth’ mindset versus a ‘Fixed’ mindset - identifying how our attitude towards learning can affect our motivation and growth. Understanding that if we don’t understand something, we don’t understand it ‘yet’ - but this can change!
Concept Curriculum has a continuation of our Biomimicry topic and we will starting our sharing day projects in small groups. Here, students have to agree upon an approach to design something using nature as inspiration. They can either start with an interesting natural organism and identify challenges that can be solved from its traits, or begin with a challenge and find examples of solutions in nature.
There is also a strong focus on communication, delegation and organisation with their work - applying their particular skills to suit the group as a whole.
In Talent Development we are focusing on setting ourselves achievable goals in their chosen area each week, and being able to communicate this appropriately. This also includes strategies to find solutions to problems as well as inspiration and motivation. The kids need to set themselves regular deadlines and book in sharing sessions and work on feedback they receive from their peers.
Here’s to a busy term!
Na,
Brendan
Thursday 17 September 2015
The term is almost at an end, and we're starting to have some great weather which I think is putting a smile on all of our faces! We have had a very busy last couple of weeks, and have been working hard on our Talent goal setting and planning. The kids have been getting into the habit of regularly setting themselves targets to achieve and then reviewing how they went each week.
We have also had a couple of visitors join us in the Pakiki classroom:
Our topic of Biomimicry is well underway, and we have been looking carefully at different 'weird' animals in nature and how they have adapted to their environment. We have also been looking at different inventions which have used nature as a heavy influence to their creation.
Finally, we have taken the opportunity at the end of the term as 'John Appreciation Week'. John Calder has been diligently coming in to coach the kids in chess for a long time now. His passion for the game certainly encourages the kids to work on their strategy and game sense skills, and I have found myself being beaten by the kids on several occasions. We celebrated with a 'High Tea' party, where we drank hot chocolate, and ate some snacks and talked in posh accents with our backs straight, elbows off the table and pinkies not touching the cups. Fun times!
Thanks to all!
Brendan/Mr C.
Monday 3 August 2015
Term 3
Greetings to all! Brendan Christie here, stepping in for Scott as the new lead teacher for Pakiki. Hopefully by now you will have received a copy of this term's newsletter... In it you will find my notes on the directions of our learning for Term 3 plus a short introduction about myself. I would like to thank Susan and Tor, and John as NEVN school principal as well as Scott for the great support and guidance I have received transitioning into the Pakiki classroom. Last week we had Max Major, a nueroscientist from Otago University come in and run some experiments with the kids on how the brain perceives ownership of the body. Some of the kids went through an experiment to fool their brain into thinking their arm was actually a fake one - attached are photos and some videos of their thoughts afterwards.
This week we have Scout Liu coming in to work with the art enthusiasts during our talent time - she is a talented sketch artist who specialises in anime drawings, but is very diverse with her artistic styles. Scout will help develop what the students already know about vanishing points and perspective and together they will work on a collaborative project that experiments with using different mediums such as paint, charcoal and a variety of pencil types.
More to come later, thanks to all the parents who have come in and said hi before or after school. It is really a pleasure to be greeted with such enthusiasm.
Kind regards,
Brendan
Buddy Day 2015
Kia ora all,
Another year, another buddy day, giving the students an opportunity to share some of the kinds of things that happen at Pakiki with a friend from their home-school. This aims to create more of a connection between Pakiki and school and make it less of a mystery for all. The students are typically very keen to share their Pakiki place with their buddies and today was no exception. I have added a set of photos showing some of the kids in action as we created and researched catapults, critically analysed famous cases of musical plagiarism and made our own judgment on on the songs' similarities and invested the afternoon engaging in creative activities. A lot of fun for all, I hope. I would also like to take this opportunity to say farewell and thanks to all those who have supported me and who I have worked with at Pakiki over 2 and half years of Wednesdays. I have had a lot of fun, learnt much and most of all meet some amazing students. All the best for your new learning kids
April 29
This morning started with our second installment of Dabrowski. Today we looked at his theory of positive self-disintegration. This is basically a way of thinking about self-reflection and our habits. We unpacked and paraphrased a juicy Dabrowski quote then we set about positively disintegrating our own individual learning habits. The students were mixed in their ability to unpack their own habits, I scaffolded some of these difficulties but I also want to record their current understanding so we compare their understanding later in the year. At this point some of the students - Cora and Billie e.g. - took it upon themselves to plan out their day. I had deliberately not instructed this today for a variety of reasons, mostly because I want them to reflect on their Dabrowski revelations next week, on the other hand I didn't stop those who just went ahead and did it. After our Dabrowski we swapped to talent - Martin has returned from his worldly travels (which he described to us and showed the blog he created after lunch) so we did some quick diagnostics to see how much of the algebra we had done in his absence he could do. He quickly moved along to solving for x with fraction answers. Cora had good success simplifying equations and solving for x. Hamish made good progress on his writing which I was pleased about! Solomon spent a lot of time thinking about food during this section of his writing. Vinnie readjusted the audience for his scratch programme - he is now adapting his work into an educational reading game for young children. I think this is a great idea, which we can test with Ms. Leia's class of youngsters. Nico had a great session first with people testing and making suggesting for his game, and then incorporating some of the suggestions - it is a great wee game and still improving - well done Nico! The art students, John, Emma and Ayla, had a visit today to the animal attic where they were lucky enough to work with an artist and continue their animal drawing theme. The results will be on the wall next week - but it seems they had a lot of fun and have created some cool artwork using different materials to what we have been using at Pakiki.
Today's chess lesson was on forks and pins - a valuable lesson for me as I was able to attack Liam's queen with a fork and force a resignation - thanks John :) In the afternoon we heard from Martin who we welcomed back from several weeks away on holiday in Europe. Martin had a kept a thorough blog while he was away so we invested some time looking at Gaudi architecture from Barcelona, some famous Italian structures and hearing about his favourite visit - Stonehenge at Salisbury. Following Martin's recap we turned to our music unit. We did some shared google searching on the tv/internet and the students helped me search for information about my question on cultural differences and instruments. Then they were off on their own research paths. Vinnie, Cora and Prastutee all searched for interesting instrument origins (a 60000 year old bone flute seems to be the oldest known instrument). John and Michael teamed up to work on songs written during and around war and uncovered an ANZAC marching song written in 1916. Nico and Martin uncovered a lot about ancient music making from Egypt, Byzantine empires and Emma and Zara found some information out about a bagpipe from Ancient Egypt. The focus on old instruments from various cultures that so many took had me wondering about the downside of providing a modelling lesson at the start of the session. There were many options to choose to research - the kids had brainstormed all the connections between music and change they could think of the week earlier - but the vast majority followed my lead in the modelled lesson. Never mind, I am sure they will splinter in to different discoveries and interests the further their research goes.
See you next week!
Scott.
April 1.
Kia ora all
A busy day finishing off term projects, assessing ourselves, working on talent projects and for some who got everything sorted (Cora) having a go at using "fun theory" to solve some problems. Cora worked on an interactive maths game for students to play when they are getting tired in the afternoon. Everybody had to do some mild reflecting and set some goals for the rest of the year. These will be attached to a document I will send out early next week that include a comment from me and leave a comment space for whanau to contribute. I am from poems were finsihed up and self-assessed (except Vinnie's self-assessment, which has mysteriously disappeared....hmmm?). Students set about working on their amygdala projects and their brain collages. The latter are mostly done now and looking great. I will post them on the wall over the holiday break (which starts to suggest how much of a holiday this is). In the morning I spent the whole morning centred around the writing talent group. Others came and went with problems they thought they needed me to solve and questions they were pondering but for the most part I worked with Michael, Megan and Prastutee to help them spark their work into life (Solomon and Hamish, who are also writers had plenty of me last week and prior so they were already flying - well done today -especially Hamish who showed a continued improvement in self-managing for success - well done). My attention worked (hurray - I am useful!). Prastutee went on a creative wave pounding us with with ideas as we developed the plot graph. Michael was joining in and when he realised their was some important foreshadowing his previous writing would benefit from he rushed off to an area to write it in while the idea was hot. Great thinking and learning choice Michael. The two of them have a wonderful plan for a very good story that continues to develop their idea of parallel universes. Excellent creative thinking you two!
In the middle session Emma's dad, Michel, came and helped the maths group with algebra. This was great and freed me up to be working with Ayla and others who were struggling with a few things (mostly technological) in order to finish their brain collages. This meant that by the time we had chess, two of the four talent groups had some serious individual attention. This continued after lunch when Liam revealed the web server he had developed for the scratch group to share their work within the class. This is a useful tool so that the students can share their coding and give each other ideas and hints from computer to computer - thanks Liam! Only the artists didn't get individual attention today though Emma still managed to draw some stunning tigers! Guess whose first with me on day one next term!
We ended the day with the term shop - I had some goodies I had been gathering up and some went on display for purchase via the Pakiki money that the students had earned helping with general class (non-learning) tasks like cleaning up etc. I have often done blind auctions at this time and was intending to do so again but had a last minute brain wave to do a shop. This provided some opportunities to talk about loans, hire purchases, interest, "interest free" and service fees. These came about because students were looking for loans. We also talked about the need for capital or underwriters (financial backing we called it) before business could operate with loan structures. Of course the Pakiki shop, being a newly fledged business, had no such connections was not able to offer loans. This lead the students to naturally consider saving their money (as did m deliberately pricing the very best goods beyond anyones means). It was interesting to watch the financial decisions the students made. Learning with some fun thrown in for good measure. I will open the shop periodically next term - maybe a couple of times - to keep the conversation going.
Cheers all and have a great break,
Scott.
March 11
Hi all, today started with us drifting into talent as we arrived at various times. This works well as everyone can settle into their learning easily and I can call tutorial groups to me once the full team is here. This morning I worked with the mathematicians on a problem solving mission which they dedicated much time to but have not yet solved (though almost - they are fully on track). We will retackle it next week but only briefly. There is a fine line between persistence and being bogged down. They then worked on some more algebra, using their skills to solve equations and crack codes. I think Liam got onto the balancing equations section but will confirm when I mark their work later. The writers made some good progress. I was especially impressed with Hamish and Solomon. The 3 of us helped Solomon brainstorm just what the setting of a turn of the 20th century English fishing village might contain and we talked about the importance of research when writing a historical novel. We then turned to Hamish who had a cursory plot forming out of some brainstorming and planning he had been doing earlier. Within 5 minutes he had a great idea formed and had a very good starting scene planned that would set the rest of the plot up nicely. He was well into writing out this scene by the time we had to stop. What he has so far is perfect in terms of what he was planning. Well done Hamish. The other writers had a team meeting exploring the way they were going to co-construct their novel which is being written from 3 different character's perspectives. Each student began writing their section today and while I got back enough to see they had made some progress I will be reading through this tonight. The artists began by focussing on various animal eyes based around an art tutorial online. They then created a close-up of animals heads as a way of integrating their previously worked on skill. We then analysed some of the results and thought about the way sometimes we struggle making the leap from knowing something to doing something. John noted there was a tendency to normalise our pictures (his words) and in doing so lose some of the new skills we were attaining. This will be an ongoing challenge for us across the year. The scratch team were working on integrating sprites. Some of them could already do this successfully - Nicholas notably and Vinnie to an extent. These two were still having some hiccups with points and time variables so we analysed some code on my octopus game and they attempted to "unglitch" their coding. Nico made progress getting his dog to move up and down as well as left and right and started to incorporate another sprite that would move randomly. Zara's code also got her sprite to move successfully in all directions and she is working on the interacting challenge.
In the next section we started with an ongoing class debate regarding brain - breaks, financial rewards, and tolerance around differentiated learning styles. It is not that this class has a problem with these, more that they seem to be a spirited area for discussion. These meetings are doing a wonderful job of allowing the students to explore debating a point of view in a way that shows respectful disagreement or support, and where reasons are paramount. In the end I had a secret vote taken for the various issues just so I could see where the class was positioning itself - it was pretty much split 50/50. As such I have decided to have the casting vote to resolve the deadlock and to incorporate some kind of compromise amongst the positions. Here it is: on the subject of brain breaks - brain break cards can be played for 5 minute breaks (once a day except for in extraneous circumstances, as determined by Mr K); Brian-breaks do not include computer games; brain-breaks do not mean you can distract others but pairs can take them together; there is no reward for not using a brain-break; brain breaks cannot be used during clean up time. The auction shall be 'blind', however, the prizes will be sorted into categories (3 or so) each with a different starting reserve. There will be a bogus prize in each auction. You can choose not to spend your money and save it for a future auction. REMEMBER, the prizes will be small - Mr. K purchases these out of his own pocket and there are 48 kids at Pakiki. You do the maths (prize donations are welcome :) The auction is more about having a laugh to celebrate the end of term, more than anything else.
After our meeting we moved onto our poetry. The students are almost all finished now or very close to it. If you get the chance come and read your child's poem :) When all the classes are done I will post the poems on the wall, with the permission of the authors, of course. Well done Cora, Emma, Liam, Nico, Ayla and the others who are all done. It is valuable learning for the students to focus on the drafting, editing and reworking process that is important to successful writing.
After lunch we looked at the amygdala, our fear response and how we might control it when we are experiencing amygdala hi-jacking. The students took notes from our shared research and then we brainstormed various ways they could share their findings. We have t.v. interviews with 'experts', newspaper articles, scratch animations, information posters, and animated dramas. Well done Vinnie, Liam, Emma, Martin, Nico and Michael for making such good progress. I look forward to seeing the rest completed next week.
Cheers all, see you next week,
Scott.
Feb 25
Hi all,
this morning started with a look at the class meeting book where there were two entries. The first was the statement "I hungry". This lead to a discussion around the verb "to be" (which was obviously missing and the source of much amusement to the class). In an earlier life I had studied te reo Maori at university and became quite interested in verb differences between Maori and English - especially the verb "to be" and the verb "to have", both of which do not exist in te reo. What interested me was the way the language reflected cultural understandings about the relationship between the individual and the community and about possessions. Maori were traditionally communal and both private property and the individual were not given the significance that they have in traditional Western conceptions. I was curious if the students would see the social implications of these verbs not existing in a language. They were quick to note the lack of private ownership ( I think it was John who picked this up) but didn't notice the differences in understanding the subject ( there is some background knowledge needed here). I can't quite remember the segue but something in the discussion about possessions lead Nico to raise the issue of NZ troops being deployed in the middle east. Nico wasn't the only student interested in this current event and an interesting discussion emerged which I based on the idea of multiple perspectives (which the students understand as a 'thinking tool' in the classroom). I wouldn't say that everyone was into it but it was welcoming to see a number of students interested in the political and social debate, including notably today Solomon, Nico, Hamish, Michael and Liam.
After this sidetrack we got to what I had actually planned, which began with a quick warm up using random connections ( a game to encourage generalisations). We then did another mini research project on Habits of Mind. Today was looking at "taking responsible risks". The students had 10 minutes to research, gather and paraphrase their information. We then had several share their findings. The point of these mini-tasks is to introduce or entrench research skills and to introduce and reinforce important habits of mind to students who may not have met them. We finished the first session by returning to our I am from poetry. I had a checklist of poetic techniques ready for the students and we used this to analyse a poem together. Then we took to writing our own, checklists at the ready. Liam completed his very quickly and was more than willing to elaborate and refine his poetic language. Well done. Virtually all the students wrote with good focus during this session and it was encouraging to see some students acting metacognitively and deliberately choosing spaces which they found helped them write more efficiently (well done Billie and Michael). I look forward to marking the drafts over the next few days.
After morning tea I had planned to watch the next session in our neuroscience unit and make direct links to some change generalisations. However, Hamish and Solomon asked if we could address the other entry in the meeting book which was about student attention and choices. They were concerned that some students were "doing their own thing" a little and this was not a luxury afforded to all. A fair enough inquiry. So, instead of neuroscience we had a community of enquiry on the issue. The students were thoughtful and focussed in this discussion and I applaud it as part of our 'own your own learning' theme. Martin set the ball rolling with an argument around equality - defined here as everyone getting the same distribution of rights - basically what was good for one ought to be good for all. The point was raised that if the discussion was not giving instructions perhaps those that were interested could stay and those that were not just head off. Someone else then said that when the heading off included computers this could be distracting to others. A very wise head ( I think Emma or Cora) suggested that Mr. K could talk less and just go straight to clear and concise instructions. Someone else (MIchael?) thought we needed to ask permission if we wanted to leave to another activity. Solomon asked if we could timetable breaks, so that different people could take them at different times. I listened with a lot of interest as the students talked and shaped the kind of classroom they wanted. I added two ideas of my own. The first, which I positioned (or tried to) as just another participant in the discussion, was that when it comes to instructions students (people actually) have very different ways of taking in information and very different needs as to how much information they need to feel comfortable to start. In this instance if someone is ready to go, they ought to go (with a quick indication to me they are ready). I do not see any point in students listening to me when they are ready. When it comes to more general discussions people often have different interests and my typical approach is that if the students are choosing learning or practising activities (reading, drawing, writing being 3 typical ones) I have no problem with it. My judgement is made on the quality of a student's learning progress not their particular learning style. If it is a discussion I feel we all need to be a part of I will of course let that be known and expectations will be adjusted accordingly. In response to Solomon's suggestion we decided to implement a card system. Each student created their own personal card which they could play once a day. It allows them 10 minutes of doing anything reasonable so long as it does not distract others' learning. Needless to say, neuroscience went out the window for the day and the time-out cards were made. Thanks Solomon and Hamish for helping us establish the culture of the class early in the year.
Chess finished the morning session with John teaching back row check mate and the students began a tournament that will run across the term, the intention of which is primarily to encourage students to vary their opponents.
The afternoon was all about talent. The scratch team started with me and focussed on animating using costumes and direction so that they could move their sprite fluently around the screen no matter what direction they were going, in a way that looked like it was actually walking rather than just gliding. Nico was rightly proud of his scratch programming today getting a dog to move about nicely. Zara, who is only on her second day of scratch made very good progress; Vinnie completed some excellent independent problem solving to get his diver to move properly; Hamish got his bat moving well and is only one step from completing this mini-task. This is exciting for the kids because it is an important step in designing games! The maths kids also had success. Martin challenged himself to a very tricky multiplication problem and worked tirelessly at it. He also learnt a more efficient multiplication method for big numbers. Liam got very excited doing algebra and demonstrated excellent success and interest. Cora worked hard at her algebra which she also wanted to challenge herself to do. Her and I watched a Khan academy clip on balancing equations and her success and confidence bloomed from there. The art team worked on leg structures, first watching a youtube clip from a tertiary lecture on mammals legs and then practising drawing them on different mammals of their choosing. John (who actually wants to draw cars I think) drew a wolf and an ostriches legs running; Emma did a great job on a deer and started practising cats (which she has set as her next challenge) and Ayla drew an elephant and sketched the leg structure of a velociraptor. The writers all had individualised tasks set from my marking over the weekend. I will read their work over this weekend and have a small tutorial workshop to start talent next week.
A fun days education for me, I hope you enjoyed the learning too.
Looking forward to catching up next week,
Scott.
Feb 18
Whew, a very hot day 2 for Wednesday! The students did a fine job of maintaining focus in our little glass-house. We started with a creative “what if” question (what if the earth had no moon?). The idea of this kind of task is to encourage fluent thinking about consequences and effects. The students for the most part showed good fluency in their responses. The trick is to encourage them to think fluently and withhold judgement or critique until the end. We followed this with a mini-research project on Habits of Mind. The students chose a Habit they wanted to explore further, to practice questioning skills by asking a secondary question (beyond what does this mean), to search and gather information and finally to paraphrase their findings in a very brief presentation to the class. There were a lot of skills involved in this task and it gave me a look to see the different research experience different students had, as well as to enhance our understanding of the Habits of Mind. The persistence was impressive and everyone was able to present some findings. We talked as a class about the skills they had used and discussed ways to improve their use of Google. We collated our research skills ideas and will continue to build this over the term.
After morning tea we resumed our neuroscience investigation. We watched the next part of our phantom limb/blind sight documentary. Today’s episodes were discussing ‘neglect’ where a patient cannot construct consciousness of one side of their world. This lead to a range of wonderful questions from the students with notable thinking verbalised by Solomon and Vinnie. Many other students had recorded very good questioning in their notes. Note-taking was another key part of this session as part of our research skills focus. The students had some idea about note-taking tricks and there were some very effective methods employed. I particularly liked Nico’s approach which had a grid that included the key language, the corresponding central idea that went with that language and an example of what had happened to the patient. I am aiming to share this with the class next week as a useful and quite unique approach (I haven’t seen it before anyway :). John rounded out the morning with a chess lesson on en passant.
In the afternoon we had our first talent session. The maths kids were doing some pre-testing which will help me tune the rest of the talent programme. They were well focussed completing maths questions from a year 9 text in the hot afternoon with a good degree of success. The art students were looking at proportion when drawing to different scales, as well as focussing on the structure of mammals limbs. WOW! what a talented group of artists. I am really looking forward to providing resources, my limited knowledge and hopefully an expert from the field to support this group. The scratch team almost all had experience with the programme and were encouraged to explore today. Zara was brand new to scratch so I set her small tasks, gave quick tutorials to help her problem solve and bounced back and forth to see how she was getting on. Her problem solving skills were clearly evident as was her persistence - well done! The writers were given some awesome illustrations form Chris van Allsburg as possible writing inspiration. They took a look but most of them went their own way - Billie was interested in poetry so I introduced her to ballad poems (today she read the Rime of the Ancient Mariner) as a way of meshing her preferred genre with the story telling part of the group. Solomon found his way to the maths table and seemed to use this as a creative space writing a significant amount which I will read through in the morning and Prastutee and Megan got together and planned a first person story whose protagonist realises s/he (they want the gender to be undisclosed) is living parallel lives as a different creature in different universes.
Great effort team,
I look forward to more next week,
Scott.
Kia ora
Day one for Wednesday Pakiki - firstly, I had a lot of fun with this awesome group of students! We started with some quick getting to know each other activity. This was very quick and more of a chance for me to learn something about the students directly from them than it was for the students to get to know each other (because there are only 3 new students completely new to Pakiki on Wednesday this year - welcome Emma, Prastutee and Zara!). We then went straight into a technology challenge which I find a great way for students to acquaint themselves and get into cooperative learning strategies. This morning's tech challenge was called code-makers and code-breakers. We first took the opportunity for a quick history lesson and did some shared reading on the Navajo code team that the United States used in WW2. Then we set about, in small groups, making codes of our own. The groups then split in 2 and wrote a message I had given them into code. They then swapped coded messages and decoded. This proved their codes work. The harder part of the challenge was to crack a different groups code. Megan, Emma, Pratustee and Zara were the only successful code crackers - well done. Liam used his knowledge of the enigma code to help his team create a difficult code that shifted which letters represented what - well done Liam, Martin, John and Nicholas whose code proved very uncrackable even after I gave opposing teams some hints. We finished the first session by looking over our "Pakiki Way" - a set of learning behaviours that we hope the students will strive to include as they go about their learning this year.
In the middle session we started by looking at the talent choices that we are going to start with. The students were able to look over them and then ranked their preferred choices. Over the week I will collate this data, compare it to school and home talents identified adn sort the students into groups. My preference is, as much as possible, to group the students according to what they want to do unless it really isn't working or we have unmanageable numbers in on group. I am aiming to start talent projects next week. Following this we analysed some poetry that reflects on the self. These "I am from" poems use some interesting language and metaphor to unpack the author's place in the world. We categorised the thinking that was going on in the poems then brainstormed ideas about ourselves using equivalent categories, with the addition of what we saw in ourselves as a learner. The students showed some excellent fluency in recording their ideas and over future sessions we will elaborate these ideas into poetic language. At 12 we engaged in some chess play. It was excellent to see that everyone in the class already knew how to play chess. I had a great game with Martin (and Nico) who played aggressively and very thoughtfully to first take control of the game, then lose control and finally pressure a mistake from me that ended in a victory for him - all done with fun and lots of smiling - a thoroughly enjoyable opportunity to see just how wonderfully capable a chess player Martin is.
In the afternoon we focussed on questioning techniques and how to ask questions that illicit more information. Most of the students had a fairly good grasp of this with Solomon, Michael and Hamish being notable contributors to this thinking. The students were keen on thinking and discussing some of the strange phenomena and the scinece that was being explored to explain it. Hamish even constructed a quick experiment to test some of the claims which had a few of us holding coloured pens out at the edge of our peripheral vision. Once we had unpacked this we took a look at a documentary on neuroscience (about the phenomena of phantom limbs and "blindsight") and wrote questions of our own. We shared some questions and evaluated their depth. Then we created metaphors of our own to think about questions of various depth (we had been using some "teacher" directed ones at the beginning - water and ice imagery). Some of the students had some neat ideas - the earths crust mantle and core (Meagan); a Dutch home with basement, ground floor and attic (Emma). I will look over the rest tonight.
All in all a fun days learning for me - I hope it was the same for you all!
Take care,
Scott.